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The death of the Aral Sea

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Once one of
the world's largest inland seas and home to thousands of species, in under 20
years the Aral Sea has shrunk to ten percent
of its original size and is so salty that barely any life form remains. The
Russians were taught to believe that the sea was an "error of nature" and
therefore pointless, but as our Observer points out, the real catastrophe was
man-made.

Once a vast
stretch of water lying between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the Aral Sea covered 68,000 squared kilometres
of water; placing it in fourth place on the
world's largest inland saline bodies of water. For the best part of the past century, inhabitants around the Aral Sea
thrived on the fishing industry, supplying the former USSR with 20 percent of its fish
products. The Aral Sea's fate was sealed as
early as 1918, however, when the Soviet authorities decided to divert two rivers
that supplied the sea towards a neighbouring Uzbek desert in order to turn the
region into one of the biggest raw cotton producers. Construction of the canals
began in the 1940s, and although the USSR did succeed in growing cotton
and rice out of desert land, by the beginning of the 1960s the sea's water
level had started to fall. The lake since split in two, and then three. This
year, one of the three dried up completely, leaving only 6,000 squared kilometres of
water left in Kazakhstan,
where efforts by the government maintain the remaining northern lake.

Alexey
Yablokov is the leader of "Green Russia", an environment party which works
under the socio-political movement "Yabloko".

When the media talk about the ‘the Aral Sea
catastrophe' - the fact that the sea has almost disappeared - they usually miss
the most important point: it wasn't a natural disaster but the result of a carefully
orchestrated plan. Replacing the sea with rice fields was part of Stalin's
infamous plans to remodel nature. Maps printed in the 1960s clearly reveal the
extent of the planning. Naturally, it was a huge mistake on behalf of the Soviet
planners who were trying too hard to please the authorities and never really looked
into the consequences on the environment.

Before we can begin making improvements, we should first admit to this
political and managerial mistake. The people who drafted and signed these
monstrous plans haven't been named. Any long-term projects to turn this place
into a blossoming garden won't be possible until the social and political
structure of Central Asia starts to resemble something
more like the EU. Projects are in abundance - it's the political will that is
lacking. There are already interesting ideas to build big thermal solar power
plants, that would be able to export electricity to neighbouring countries.
Agricultural technologies permitting high-yielding crops with very low water
consumption are already up and running."

The Aral Sea as a holiday destination

Documentary
footage featuring the Aral Sea and its
surrounding areas -also by A.N. Bogachev in 1969. You can see the swimmers
after 5 minutes 30 secs.